Working on County relief for 40 cents an hours during the Great Depression, thousands of unemployed clearing brush in Los Angeles’ Griffith Park were caught in a wildfire, with many forced to fight it without experience. Dozens died.

‘Mass Murder in Griffith Park’ by Jennie Grey from Western Worker. Vol. 2 No. 42. October 16, 1933.

L.A. County Guilty of Murdering 100 Workers–Government Ignored Warnings of Workers–Charity Bosses Drove Men Into Fire.

“Get down in there and get down quick if you want any more work,” was the command from the relief job straw bosses that sent more than 100 county relief workers to be burned to death and 125 to be injured, many of them seriously, perhaps fatally, in a brush fire which swept over 1000 acres in Griffith Park on the afternoon of Oct. 2 in Los Angeles. Over 100 charred bodies have already been found.

The catastrophe, one of the most terrible in the history of Los Angeles, is directly due to the criminal negligence of the county authorities, as the facts show.

The county officials, despite the protests of workers and the Relief Workers Protective Union, have at all times refused to provide adequate and trained forces to be present there in case of emergency. Workers who have had their limbs crushed by falling rocks have had to wait hours for adequate medical attention. In the catastrophe only one fire department responded to the first call, the others arriving late. Adequate medical attention was not available for the first hours of the fire.

DANGER KNOWN

The death trap at Griffith Park, a cup-like canyon, between Dam and Mineral Wells canyons, is surrounded with high, steep walls and is overgrown with brush. Fires have frequently broken out there, and any shift of wind may turn a minor blaze into a fire of serious proportions. Into this death-trap, on the afternoon of Oct. 2, the bosses in charge of the work, sent 1500 inexperienced and untrained workers to fight a fire. “Smack it out with your shovels, or cut a fire break,” were the orders.

As the men went in, from the 1500 only one voice, that of an experienced fire fighter, rang out, warning the workers to go back–that any change of wind would result in their death. Some heeded this advice, but the majority went on, many of them never to return. That was about 2:30 o’clock. About 3:30, it was believed the fire was under control. Then the wind shifted, and the fire surrounded the workers so fast they had no chance to escape.

Many of the men burned to death might have escaped had they been at least guided by such as are experienced in fire fighting. Some fought their way up the canyon walls and were only a few feet from the top, where there was safety, when they fell exhausted and perished in the flames. Others, entrapped, died in the depths of the canyon.

FORCED TO GO DOWN

The survivors of those who were trapped in the bottom of the canyon, with three of the four walls of the canyon in flames about them, assert they were sent in by their straw bosses against their will. City firemen, who had previously warned that the place was unsafe, aided many to escape. However, many were cremated there.

Few of the dead workers have as yet been identified. Most bodies are burned beyond recognition. Hundreds of women and children dependents of the relief workers, went to Griffith Park to learn if their husbands and providers were still alive. No one was permitted to see the bodies.

Officials in an effort to shift the responsibility for the catastrophe from themselves, are developing ideas such as that “possibly Communists’ caused the fire.” In this manner they hope to incite an hysteria against the same Communists who only the day before led 40,000 workers on a Hunger March.

The Times, who headlined such lies, when faced by a Committee of the Relief Workers Protective Union, admitted they had no bases for the lie.

But so glaring are the facts that even the Los Angeles Times is forced to admit that the bosses in charge drove 1500 inexperienced workers into the hell, without the guidance of experienced fire fighters. The Los Angeles Record comes out with an extra in which the facts concerning the fire are exposed:

THE OFFICIALS OF THE COUNTY WERE WARNED AS FAR BACK AS 1929 THAT GRIFFITH PARK WAS A FIRE HAZARD.

Mr. Davenport, the physician who filed the protest letter, stated that “This recent fire was invited by the park department.”

Fire prevention laws were broken in Griffith Park. Areas under tension wires are not kept clear of brush. The fire fighting equipment is worthless and there is no supervision by rangers and experienced fire fighters.

ONLY WORKERS SUFFERED

The facts are further, that: All men employed at Griffith Park had families, that being a requisite for “employment.” Only workers were burned. No bosses were injured. All attempts made at investigation by the Relief Workers’ Protective Union are being checked in every way possible.

At the Herbert Benjamin meeting, held the day after the fire, Alfred J. Baudais, a survivor, told a graphic story of the catastrophe. Baudais’ face was burned; his eye-brows and hair badly singed. His appearance drew a gasp of horror from the audience.

“About two-thirty,” said Baudais, “we were told to get off the job and go help fight the fire. They told about three bus-loads of us to go to the golf club house near the service yard. We walked about a mile over the mountain trails to the scene of the fire.

“All of us were inexperienced. We don’t know much about fighting fires. They didn’t give us any instructions, whatsoever. The bosses took no precaution, but just let us run up there like cattle. There were about 250 of us going up one fire trail–that fire trail is the only one there is. Then the bosses ordered us to go down into the canyon to fight the fire.

“The wind changed and the fire surrounded us so fast there was no chance to escape. The men lay with their heads uphill–some of them still crawling and screaming. Some of the boys tried to help them and got caught. The straw bosses ordered more in there. Some of them saw it meant their death and refused to go. We tried to help out. our fellow workers as much as possible. The workers were lying about with all their clothes burned off.

NEGROES, MEXICANS, WHITES

“There were Negroes and Mexicans and whites out there, but they all looked the same–black. There was only one ranger out there that I saw. The firemen helped when they came, but they came too late. When I came down, toward five o’clock, the straw bosses wanted me to take a pick and shovel and go to work fighting the fire again. There was no relief given to most of us, though we were burned, bruised and suffering from shock. and exhaustion.”

On top of all this a shameless attempt to saddle the cost of relief for the widows and orphans upon the backs of the workers is apparently being made, according to reports of workers. The foreman, Cook, stated that the workers had suggested giving one day’s wages, $2.40, for the families of the dead men. But the feeling of the workers is strongly against this, for they know the city and county are responsible and should give adequate relief to the families of the martyred men.

Five thousand relief workers have been pulled off their jobs. The bosses, fearing their indignation, are giving them their relief without work.

Recently it was voted that insurance covering the relief workers was costing the county too much and would be discontinued after Oct. 5th. However, that was just two days two late. Now the officials are trying to classify the dead as “paupers,” and so not entitled to insurance.

The holocaust was only another experience that proved to the 500,000 on relief in Los Angeles, that only the Communist Party and the jobless organizations under its leadership, expresses their interests. Only these organizations fight the graft ridden administration against forced labor, for adequate relief, and the protection of the workers against all hazards.

Publicity is going out through the local Mexican radio station calling upon all workers to sign no papers and to have nothing to do with the officials, but to come to 741 Wall street for information, the headquarters of the Relief Workers Protective Union.

Western Worker was the publication of the Communist Party in the western United States, focused on the Pacific Coast, from 1933 until 1937. Originally published twice monthly in San Francisco, it grew to a weekly, then a twice-weekly and then merged with the Party’s Daily Worker on the West Coast to form the People’s Daily World which published until 1957. Its issues contain a wealth of information on Communist activity and cultural events in the west of those years.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/westernworker/1933/v2n42-oct-16-1933.pdf